‘Anyone can ask questions,’ said Mr Wonka. ‘It’s the answers that count. Now then, if the three of you in the bed would care to try a dose . . .’
‘Just one minute!’ said Grandma Josephine, sitting up straight. ‘First I’d like to take a look at this seventy-year-old Oompa-Loompa who is now back to thirty!’
Mr Wonka flicked his fingers. A tiny Oompa-Loompa, looking young and perky, ran forward out of the crowd and did a marvellous little dance in front of the three old people in the big bed. ‘Two weeks ago, he was seventy years old and in a wheel-chair!’ Mr Wonka said proudly. ‘And look at him now!’
‘The drums, Charlie!’ said Grandpa Joe. ‘Listen! They’re starting up again!’
Far away down on the bank of the chocolate river, Charlie could see the Oompa-Loompa band striking up once more. There were twenty Oompa-Loompas in the band, each with an enormous drum twice as tall as himself, and they were beating a slow mysterious rhythm that soon had all the other hundreds of Oompa-Loompas swinging and swaying from side to side in a kind of trance. They then began to chant:
‘If you are old and have the shakes,
If all your bones are full of aches,
If you can hardly walk at all,
If living drives you up the wall,
If you’re a grump and full of spite,
If you’re a human parasite,
THEN WHAT YOU NEED IS WONKA-VITE!
Your eyes will shine, your hair will grow,
Your face and skin will start to glow,
Your rotten teeth will all drop out
And in their place new teeth will sprout.
Those rolls of fat around your hips
Will vanish, and your wrinkled lips
Will get so soft and rosy-pink
That all the boys will smile and wink
And whisper secretly that this
Is just the girl they want to kiss!
But wait! For that is not the most
Important thing of which to boast.
Good looks you’ll have, we’ve told you so,
But looks aren’t everything, you know.
Each pill, as well, to you will give
AN EXTRA TWENTY YEARS TO LIVE!
So come, old friends, and do what’s right!
Let’s make your lives as bright as bright!
Let’s take a dose of this delight!
This heavenly magic dynamite!
You can’t go wrong, you must go right!
IT’S WILLY WONKA’S WONKA-VITE!’
14
Recipe for Wonka-Vite
‘Here it is!’ cried Mr Wonka, standing at the end of the bed and holding high in one hand a little bottle. ‘The most valuable bottle of pills in the world! And that, by the way,’ he said, giving Grandma Georgina a saucy glance, ‘is why I haven’t taken any myself. They are far too valuable to waste on me.’
He held the bottle out over the bed. The three old ones sat up and stretched their scrawny necks, trying to catch a glimpse of the pills inside. Charlie and Grandpa Joe also came forward to look. So did Mr and Mrs Bucket. The label said:
WONKA-VITE
Each pill will make you YOUNGER by exactly 20 years
CAUTION!
Do not take more than the amount recommended by
Mr. Wonka
They could all see the pills through the glass. They were brilliant yellow, shimmering and quivering inside the bottle. Vibrating is perhaps a better word. They were vibrating so rapidly that each pill became a blur and you couldn’t see its shape. You could only see its colour. You got the impression that there was something very small but incredibly powerful, something not quite of this world, locked up inside them and fighting to get out.
‘They’re wriggling,’ said Grandma Georgina. ‘I don’t like things that wriggle. How do we know they won’t go on wriggling inside us after we’ve swallowed them? Like those Mexican jumping beans of Charlie’s I swallowed a couple of years back. You remember that, Charlie?’
‘I told you not to eat them, Grandma.’
‘They went on jumping about inside me for a month,’ said Grandma Georgina. ‘I couldn’t sit still!’
‘If I’m going to eat one of those pills, I jolly well want to know what’s in it first,’ said Grandma Josephine.
‘I don’t blame you,’ said Mr Wonka. ‘But the recipe is extremely complicated. Wait a minute . . . I’ve got it written down somewhere . . .’ He started digging around in the pockets of his coat-tails. ‘I know it’s here somewhere,’ he said. ‘I can’t have lost it. I keep all my most valuable and important things in these pockets. The trouble is, there’s such a lot of them . . .’ He started emptying the pockets and placing the contents on the bed — a homemade catapult . . . a yo-yo . . . a trick fried-egg made of rubber . . . a slice of salami . . . a tooth with a filling in it . . . a stinkbomb . . . a packet of itching-powder . . . ‘It must be here, it must be, it must,’ he kept muttering. ‘I put it away so carefully . . . Ah! Here it is!’ He unfolded a crumpled piece of paper, smoothed it out, held it up and began to read as follows: